Limestone Carving Dates To Days Of The Timucuans

NEW PORT RICHEY - The large limestone blends in the
landscaping of the popular seafood restaurant along busy U.S. 19. Most
who come to Johnny Leverock’s Seafood House pass by without
noticing the crude faces carved into the rock.

The 8-by-4-foot rock dates back more than 1,500 years, to when aboriginal people occupied these lands.

The rock is thought to have been carved by Timucuans between 1
and 400 AD, according to Joe Fulghum, general manager of
Leverock’s. Fulghum discovered some information about the rock in
the files when he first came to the restaurant two years ago.

According to that history, the rock, which has two faces
carved into it, is an effigy to local priest chiefs, perhaps sun and
rain gods given human faces. A cavity indicates the rock was used for
religious ceremonies at which food and other precious items were placed
as offerings.

The rock was discovered in 1981 during construction of the
Seamarket Restaurant. A miniature golf course had been located there
before that. The restaurant was sold to the Leverock’s chain in
1991. It has been left untouched since that day - not cleaned or
otherwise altered, Fulghum said.

It originally was thought the rock was in its original
location. However, Fulghum said he had a visit from someone who grew up
in the area. The resident, who wasn't named, related how a boating
channel was dredged and rocks were lifted out with a crane and piled on
the adjacent land.

The theory is now that the large rock was excavated during dredging of the channel.

But most likely the carvings on the rock were the handiwork of
the Timucuans, one of the groups of natives at the time of
Florida’s discovery by Europeans and the beginning of recorded
history. Prior to that time is called prehistory.

The Greater Tampa Bay area was within the jurisdiction of the
Timucuans, in the subdivision of Tocobago, according to a 1996 research
paper by Charles Arnade of San Antonio, a history professor at the
University of South Florida.

Tocobago was the name of a Timucuan village or chief or both,
located at Tampa Bay, Arnade’s research states. It was possibly
the largest village, with the most important chief, in a cluster of
villages.

The Tocobago Timucuans lived a more sedentary life than their
predecessors, building semi-permanent structures in small villages with
a midden paralleling the shore. A midden is a pile of shellfish refuse
that forms a mound.

Those aboriginal peoples also had temple and burial mounds
that formed a sort of central plaza that was clean of refuse and which
was next to a ceremonial mound that was flat-topped. The headman or
chief lived on the plaza and presided over the village of as little as
10 and usually not more than 20 dwellings.

The Timucuans also had burial mounds in which they placed
their finest pottery. By this time they had perfected the art of
molding clay into useful objects, plus ceremonial pieces.

They lived near water, gathering shellfish for food. They also
hunted for meat. Other foods were grown, including roots, vegetables
and fruits. But the cultivation here was not as much as that in
northwest Florida by the time the Europeans discovered Florida in the
16th century.

The largest, and probably main village where Chief Tocobago
lived, was discovered where Safety Harbor is now. Archaeologists call
the Timucuan subdivision period between 1350 and 1513 the Safety Harbor
Culture, which has been found over a 12-county area that includes
Pasco.

The Calusas are often also said to have been in this area. But that information is now considered false, according to Arnade.

The mistake probably goes back to 1575, when Hernando de
Escalante Fontaneda in his memoirs gave the possible Calusa word
“Tanpa” to what is now Tampa Bay. Tanpa - not Tampa - was
probably a Calusa village in another area.

From that it was probably assumed that Tampa was Calusa
territory, Arnade states. However, archaeological findings place the
border between the Timucuan and Calusa people as Charlotte Harbor
rather than Tampa Bay.

There was very little difference between the two cultures,
except linguistically. Both were part of the Woodland period of
prehistory, dating from 1000 BC to 800 A.D.

The first human inhabitants of what is now Florida came
probably in the Pleistocene period when Florida was shaped,
Arnade’s research shows.

Florida was first covered by water during the Paleozoic
period, 100 million years ago. It surfaced as a land mass much larger
than today, only to practically submerge again. Sections of it emerged
again to give it today’s shape. This left a large continental
shelf, narrow on the east coast and wide on the west coast.

The first people of Florida, now called the Paleo-Indians,
lived in small groups between an estimated 10,000 to 6500 BC. Most
prehistoric people are not referred to as Indians.

Christopher Columbus, thinking he had landed in the West
Indies, mislabeled these people he encountered in 1492 when discovering
America.

Florida was recovering from the Ice Age during this period and
the Paleo-Indians were nomadic, gathering plants, roots, berries and
nuts to eat. They also would hunt enormous beasts like the mammoth and
mastodon.

Near the end of this 3,500-year period in Florida, rainfall
increased and large land animals died out, probably because of climate
changes.

The next period, Archaic, was about 6500 BC to 1000 BC. As ice
melted across North America, the seas rose and rainfall increased.
There was more fresh water and more variety of plants. But the largest
animal these prehistoric people encountered was the white-tailed deer.

The Archaic people built shelters and semi-permanent villages
along the coast and riverbanks. They had midden mounds composed of
shells, animal bones and broken pottery. They began making clay
containers, plus fishnets, and dug canoes from tree trunks.

The Mississippian, from 800 to 1500 AD, is the last time
period of Florida’s prehistoric people. Their villages were
larger. They built flat-topped pyramid mounds for burial and ceremonial
use. The Mississippians also developed a government, with rulers and
political leaders. Their pottery was decorated with designs.

When Europeans showed up in the early 1500s, the lives of
these native Floridians ended. Many died of new illnesses that
Europeans carried with them to the New World.

Continuous recorded history began in Florida when Juan Ponce
de Leon came in 1513. The Spanish recorded about 25,000 aborigines in
Florida then. The population of what became the Tampa Bay area was
between 1,000 and 2,000, Arnade estimates.